October 2004

October 31, 2004

I want to tell you a true story. If you have a weak heart, if you're pregnant, if you have a small kid in the same room with you, I suggest that you think twice about reading this. Turn on the lights, lock the door, make sure that the gun is loaded. I take no responsibility for what will happen, could be more dangerous than chanting "Ken Jennings" three times in succession while staring into a cracked mirror under a six-foot ladder.

I know this is a true story because it happened to me. A year ago on Halloween while gray ash snowed down on all of San Diego, the moon hidden behind a thick layer of smoke, I gathered up a couple of bags of Willy Wonka's best candy, Nerds and Skittles and Sweetarts, all in small giveaway-to-the-ghouls-and-goblins packaging. I had three full bags mixed in a plastic pumpkinhead, confident that this would finally be a Halloween that a little becostumed mite would receive the offering of my generosity.

See, for years, my wife and I had lived in the very back corner of a dark apartment complex, behind a gate guarded by a rotweiller. It was a yard that no kid dared entered, so every year we would be left with huge bags, Costco-sized bags of candy that would last us well past Christmas, nearly to Valentine's Day. This year would be different. A new neighborhood, nicer, with lots of streetlights and no rabid-looking dogs hungry for children.

As soon as the blood-red sun disappeared behind the smoky horizon, I made my way to the front porch and waited. It started with a trickle and in my happy Halloween mood, I handed out big handfuls of cavity-causers to the little tykes hidden behind masks of various animals and cartoon characters. I shook hands with parents and wished everyone a very Merry Halloween. It felt good. Kids make me smile and little kids dressed up as Dalmatians tend to make me feel that all is right with the world.

An hour or so after sunset, I realized that something had gone terribly wrong. I looked into the pumpkinhead and could see the bottom. Just then, the gentle stream of t-or-t'ers turned into a raging river, knocking down doors, demanding their booty. Small kids in creative costumes turned into teenagers with sheets thrown over their heads. Plastic bags with Halloween designs became brown paper sacks. Groups of two or three became dozens. And the entire block was teaming.

I left my wife with the few pieces of candy in the pumpkinhead, told her to give out a piece at a time, and I rushed to the market. As you could probably guess, the IGA had slim pickings and what they did have had been marked up. I made off with some individually wrapped candybars and a couple of bags of the buffet candy. Fifty dollars worth of the stuff that only a grandma would buy.

By the time I made it back to the house, my wife had retreated behind the door, out of candy and in shock. A line of zombies had formed at every house on the block, their "Trick or Treat!" chants in cadence, some adding the "Smell my feet" followed by the demand to "Give me something good to eat." I started hating them. Bastards, impatient all! Where did they come from? This neighborhood isn't that big. Were they bussing them in? Was the word out that we had the good stuff?

I rescued my wife and after taking a deep breath, remembering that this was what I wanted--just more than I'd prepared for--we went back to the porch. We satisfied a few of the young kids with a piece or two of butterscotch or peppermint. I hesitated at the sight of the teens and thought about asking a trivia question, which if answered correctly would have been worth some treats. Something easy like "Who said 'God is dead?'"

Two hours, hundreds of kids and at least seventy dollars in candy later, we were spent. The kids seemed to get older, but they were still coming. I cut off the front porch light, locked the door, and unplugged the doorbell. I could hear them beating on the door, "Trick or--"

"We're out!" I shouted.

"Trick or--"

"Done, empty, robbed. You took it all. Now go away!" I thought about boiling water. Hot wax. Rotweillers.

That night, I dreamed of kids. Little babies with outstretched hands, crying in hunger, begging me to save them. But I was out of candy. All of the teenagers had taken it.

So that's why I'm hiding in the closet this year. When the sun goes down, we'll close the curtains, extinguish all the lights, make sure the doorbell is unplugged, and hide in the back room with the stereo on loud enough so that we don't hear their begging. Sure, we may have to clean egg off the walls or toilet paper from the trees, but we won't have to go through the trauma of Halloween in this neighborhood.

October 29, 2004

I received a strange phone call yesterday. I'd just stepped in the door after another long day at the grind when the phone rang. I checked the caller ID and saw that it was yet another "Unknown Caller" but decided to answer it anyway. My "Hello" was met with silence. The whir of something, possibly gears and belts and cooling fans, and then the all-too-familiar voice of California's governor. It was quite the one-sided conversation. I ended up being bullied and now I'm feeling a bit mistreated. Aren't there laws against this sort of thing?:

GA: Hi, this is Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger {Ed. note: I spelled this correctly after four tries, a new SoT record} and I need your help.

SoT: Funny you should call, I was just thinking about--

GA: With just a few days left until the general election I am campaigning up and down Cah-lee-for-nea...

SoT: But I was wondering if you've been able to get that refund from Enron. You know that little rip-off deal that helped run Davis out and put your arse in office?--

October 28, 2004

I'm going to work on the 2004 Syntax of Things election guide, which I hope to have up on Monday morning. I don't plan on endorsing any candidates as I generally think the current choices are just too damn mediocre to bother with. Instead, I'll be endorsing other things. Stay tuned.

If you haven't decided on the lesser of the two evils, perhaps a site like SelectSmart or AOL's Election Guide President Match will help. The latter excludes all but the Republicrats, so I recommend the former if you lean a little more left or right of the middle.

For those of us who have tried repeatedly to quit smoking--or at least have thought about it a few times--but who cannot seem to put down the ciggies, a new study announced this week at the Society for Neuroscience Conference in San Diego reveals for the first time that cigarette smoking stimulates the release of opiods (not to mention dopamine) in the brain. Yep, opiods. Thus, when you hear a smoker say that quitting the habit can be more difficult than quitting heroin, there is actually now some proof to this claim.

"There is a strong relationship between alcohol and sleep," said Dwayne Godwin, Ph.D., senior researcher. "Many people have sleep problems when they stop drinking. If we could stabilize sleep, or take it back to a normal rhythm, it would address one of the reasons that alcoholics go back to drinking."

Godwin and colleagues studied the relationship between sleep and alcohol in monkeys. They found that in animals that chronically drank alcohol, the brain attempts to increase a particular protein associated with brain waves that are important to normal sleep.

The finding suggests that new medications to target the protein might improve sleep in chronic alcohol users.

I've yet to see a single World Series game. I'm writing this post just minutes before the first pitch of what could be the last game, a game that could possibly mean the end of another baseball season without my beloved Braves as the champs. The team I want to win has yet to claim a single victory in the series, their big bats silenced by Bloody Socks and a midget good luck charm.

Anyway, I thought about writing two posts: one congratulatory, wishing the city of Boston good luck in cleaning up the damage from the riots; the other a little mockery. But at this point, I'm just hoping to stay awake for the first pitch.

Outside of the national pastime, in the United States spitting is no longer a socially acceptable pastime. It's decline began in the mid-19th century, when scientists first slipped sputum samples under a microscope and found them rich in bacteria. By 1873, roughly 130 cities had enacted laws prohibiting public spitting. Many more followed a decade later, when a German biologist found TB in an infected patient's phlegm.

Never hurts to add sputum to the list of things that will attract traffic to this site. Gotta give Ken Jennings some company.

So if Boston won last night, congratulations to Red Sox nation. I hope the Boston riot was minor and clean up easy. If the Red Sox lost, I hope the Boston riot was minor and clean up easy.

Update (written before this post was posted): So I managed to watch the game. Red Sox...woop! I'm happy for my friends who are Red Sox fans, both of you. Most absurd moment of the night goes to the Nike post-game, in-the-can-in-case commercial. Can we all move on now? Or do we begin a Cubs in 2005 watch? Sleep well, Ted Williams, wherever you're frozen!

Before the Boson P.D. suits up in riot gear tonight, I think it should be noted that the Red Sox have been very close before only to come away with nothing. In the words of Vin Scully:

So the winning run is at second base with two out. Three-and-two to Mookie Wilson. . . . A little roller up along first . . . behind the bag . . . it gets through Buckner! Here comes Knight! And the Mets win it!

In many ways, if the Sox do manage to win this series, the biggest winners will be all of us who are sick of hearing about "the curse."

...and tired of everything. Until my energy level reaches a more tolerable level, I'm going to let one of my favorite poets, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, do the speaking for me. If you'd rather hear the poem, click on the title for L.F's reading of it.

The dog trots freely in the street
and sees reality
and the things he sees
are bigger than himself
and the things he sees
are his reality
Drunks in doorways
Moons on trees
The dog trots freely thru the street
and the things he sees
are smaller than himself
Fish on newsprint
Ants in holes
Chickens in Chinatown windows
their heads a block away
The dog trots freely in the street
and the things he smells
smell something like himself
The dog trots freely in the street
past puddles and babies
cats and cigars
poolrooms and policemen
He doesn't hate cops
He merely has no use for them
and he goes past them
and past the dead cows hung up whole
in front of the San Francisco Meat Market
He would rather eat a tender cow
than a tough policeman
though either might do
And he goes past the Romeo Ravioli Factory
and past Coit's Tower
and past Congressman Doyle of the Unamerican Committee
He's afraid of Coit's Tower
but he's not afraid of Congressman Doyle
although what he hears is very discouraging
very depressing
very absurd
to a sad young dog like himself
to a serious dog like himself
But he has his own free world to live in
His own fleas to eat
He will not be muzzled
Congressman Doyle is just another
fire hydrant
to him
The dog trots freely in the street
and has his own dog's life to live
and to think about
and to reflect upon
touching and tasting and testing everything
investigating everything
without benefit of perjury
a real realist
with a real tale to tell
and a real tail to tell it with
a real live
barking
democratic dog
engaged in real
free enterprise
with something to say
about ontology
something to say
about reality
and how to see it
and how to hear it
with his head cocked sideways
at streetcorners
as if he is just about to have
his picture taken
for Victor Records
listening for
His Master's Voice
and looking
like a living questionmark
into the
great gramophone
of puzzling existence
with its wondrous hollow horn
which always seems
just about to spout forth
some Victorious answer
to everything

October 25, 2004

October 22, 2004

I've spent too much time looking at the satellite images at Space.com to finish the post I wanted to have ready for today (a response to an e-mail I received asking about my least favorite baseball teams). The site has over 100 interactive photos, many of them with timely significance. These are some of the highlights:

He died with $91 in his bank account. His death was from alcohol. He was known to consume 17 shots of Johnny Walker Red per hour, washed down with Colt malt liquor. The individualist never wanted to be known as the leader of a generation, as the king of the Beats.

They will post damage reports. Talk of this storm will be of mudslides and washed-out roads, of traffic jams and broken umbrellas. Long after the weather becomes boring again, when people like me who have nothing better to do than to complain about the sunshine and lack of clouds, they'll remind us that it does rain in Southern California. But they promised a storm.

Storms, the definition relative, but don't they usually involve something more than wind and rain. Shouldn't there be a power outage or a tree on my block that has lost more than a twig? If people are going to go to all of that sandbag-filling effort every time it clouds up to the north and west of us, they're going to run out of sand. And bags.

I woke up early hoping to experience something from this Alaskan storm of doom. The wind was high, the chimes on the front porch were out of tune. Mist with the occasional heavier drops, but most of the morning was just ominous sky and blathering weathermen.

Mid-morning we get a squall, rain blowing horizontally and for a brief moment I'm reminded of August in Florida, but this is just a small taste of that. California would sink into the Pacific if that were to happen. The rain lasts for about a half an hour, some scattered reports of hail, but not one clap of thunder.

Now it's late afternoon. The rain has stopped for now. Moved on to the desert. I didn't take a single picture, but I did listen to a song that will be on the brain for days to come, a Link Wray song performed live by a band named after a desert town and a SoT favorite

Despite the fact that I often deny the existence of the American League, I have to admit that baseball may not get any better in this modern age of high salaries and steroid-aided superstars than a game 7 between the Yankees and the Red Sox. Game 7 in any sport and between any teams are usually worth the time and nervous energy, but when this includes the possibility of riot police and Pedro Martinez's hair suddenly becoming straight without the use of products, then you can bet I'll be planted in front of the bedroom TV (Elaine gets the DVR for her Oprah recaps).

And it's true that I don't much care for the Yankees, but I don't go so far as to call them the "Evil Empire" or the "Bronx Bastards." I do take great pleasure in seeing them fail, and if things work out according to my hopes, I will walk by the Yankees fans I know at work tomorrow and throw a smile of mockery in their direction. Seems harsh, but I know I'm not alone. Low Culture puts it best:

Undoubtedly, there are many readers who have no sympathy for the Yankee fan, and not merely the joyous citizens of the so-called Red Sox Nation. To fans of all other baseball teams, the Yankees and their fans appear much as Americans appear to the citizens of all other nations -- spoiled with obscene prosperity that they then, adding insult to injury, proceed not merely to enjoy, but to expect, at all costs. To the rest of the baseball world, the Yankees are the hyperpower, led by a boasting, undiplomatic, bloviating madman named George, using their tremendously disproportionate wealth to tilt the playing field in their favor and to insidiously appropriate the resources of the less fortunate.

When the Yankees are humbled, it is a time to rejoice -- not merely for the partisans of the side that has bested them, but also for all those who feel that the Yankees' extraordinary success has led, in one way or another, to their own failure, in the same way that many in the world rejoice when the United States fails.

This doesn't mean that I'm pulling for a Red Sox World Championship. If they manage to usurp the reigning dictators of the American League, I hope they are handed their cursed asses by the St. Louis Cardinals, SoT's third favorite Major League team.

Rainy day San Diego. So rare, almost like snow in the Deep South, to the degree that one expects to soon hear of school closings. The roads become obstacle courses. Mud slides become real possibilities. People actually have to dig deep in closets for the seldom-used umbrellas.

I'm taking today off from work to catch up on some much needed rest in preparation for a busy seven days of work (including the weekend) to come. I might do my best CAAF imitation and attempt to write a bit with the nutcase dog in my lap for warmth and inspiration.

October 19, 2004

Peruvians consume an estimated 65 million guinea pigs each year. It is a dining experience that normally requires two hands to pick scant, sinewy meat from a bony carcass — often with the head staring up from the plate.

But earlier this year, La Molina university started exporting the "Peruvian Breed" — faster growing, plumper, tastier guinea pigs — to the United States, Japan and several European nations that have large Peruvian immigrant populations.

As a little boy, I loved to dig through the books that my great-grandmother kept beside her bed. Most of them were of the romance novel variety, but she occasionally mixed in a pulp one with a rather provocative cover that would make any nine-year-old kid want more pictures on the inside. But it was always words, usually big print words, and no pictures.

This site brings back some memories. And the virtual paperback rack (go to the Gallery) makes for some quality time-killing.

About the Rack
From the beginnings of the Paperback Revolution, the paperback rack has been as ubiquitous a fixture as the books themselves. These racks, placed in everyday locations such as drugstores, department stores, and train stations, were instrumental in bringing literature to the people. In 1935 there were fewer than 500 bookstores in the United States, and far fewer yet in Canada; the racks introduced a whole new generation to the world of reading.

Assembling an online gallery of paperbacks from the Edmonton Collection was a complicated endeavour. Copyright laws prevent the complete digital reproduction of books online, but simple thumbnail galleries of paperback covers hold relatively little value as a research resource. What of value, then, can be displayed and preserved online? It was the metaphor of the paperback rack, along with a healthy dose of materialist hermeneutics, which came to the project's rescue.

According to textual theorist Jerome McGann, literary texts cannot be known "apart from their specific material modes of existence/resistence...they are not channels of transmission, they are particular forms of transmissive interaction" (The Textual Condition, 11). When browsing through paperbacks at a drugstore, you might glance at the back cover, or open the book and read its first page. A book's specific, material details — including elements of a book's "bibliographic encoding," advertisements, marginal notes, typeface, layout, and more — speak volumes about a book's intended audience, method of distribution, and circulation.

Take a few minutes, then, to thumb through some of the titles in our virtual paperback rack. Every time you visit, a random assortment of books is drawn from a growing database based upon the Edmonton Collection. (Much like some paperback racks of the 1950s and 1960s, our rack is a true assemblage, freely mixing genres and publishing houses.) Clicking a book will let you examine its covers and several interior pages, highlighting each book's physical "feel" and appearance and illustrating several aspects of its bibliographic encoding. Clicking on the hand will spin the rack, displaying another set of texts from the database.

I read William T. Vollmann's latest Harper's essay (not up at Harper's as of today) on the plane ride over to Amsterdam. The essay is about a lot of things but mostly details the search for the mysterious Chinese tunnels of Mexicali:

Imperial, by which I mean not only the Imperial Valley but also that valley's continuation south of the border, is a boarded-up billiard arcade, white and tan; Imperial is Calexico's rows of palms, flat tan sand, oleanders, and squarish buildings, namely the Golden China Restaurant, Yum Yum Chinese Food, McDonald's, Mexican insurance; Imperial contains a photograph of a charred building and a heap of dirt: Planta Despepitadora de Algodón "Chino-Mexicana." Imperial is a map of the way to wealth, but the map has been sun-bleached back to blankness. Leave an opened newspaper outside for a month and step on it; the way it crumbles, that's Imperial. Imperial is a Mexicali wall at twilight: tan, crudely smoothed, and hot to the touch. Imperial is a siltscape so featureless that every little dip made by last century's flood gets a christening, even if the name is only X Wash....

Vollmann's written about this area before. In a 1999 essay about the Salton Sea (Username: thesyntaxofthings@gmail.com; Password: syntax), he describes his search for the mouth of the river feeding the dead "sea" in the middle of the California desert:

My plan was to cross from Calexico into Mexicali, hire a taxi, and get the driver to take me to the source of the Río Nuevo—wherever that was, but according to most accounts, just a few miles outside of town. Then I would rent a boat and ride downstream. But once I arrived in Mexicali and sought to zero in on the mysterious spot (excuse me, señor, but where exactly does it start?), people began to tell me that the river commenced right here, in Mexicali itself, in one of the cityís industrial parks, where a certain Xochimilco Lagoon was fed by a secret spring. Moreover, the municipal authorities of Mexicali were even now pressing on into the fifth year of a very fine project to entomb and forget the Río Nuevo, sealing it off underground along a concrete channel below the median strip of a new highway, whose name happened to be Boulevard Río Nuevo—a hot white double ribbon of street adorned with dirt and tires, an upended car, broken things. Along its median theyíd sunk segments of a long, long concrete tube that lay inconspicuous in a dirt trench; and between some of these segments, where the tube had been buried, were grates. Lifting the grates revealed square pits, with jet-black water flowing below, exuding a fierce sewer stench that could almost be some kind of cheese.

October 18, 2004

I'm not willing (or able) to discuss the annual disappointment, also known as the Braves in the Playoffs, but Mac over at Braves Journal has a great assessment of what the Braves need to do in the off-season.

Now that baseball season has ended (for me), I can turn my championship hopes to my beloved Auburn Tigers. Auburn has surprised a lot of people, beaten some pretty good teams, and taken care of business against the Louisiana Techs of the world. Jason Campbell has done a 360 this season, finally materializing as the quarterback everyone talked about when he came in as a Freshman. He's made the Auburn offense a multi-dimensional weapon with Cadillac Williams and two other high-quality backs filling out a solid running game. Georgia looks to be the biggest threat left on their schedule, but no Auburn fan ever discounts that final regular season game against that other school from Alabama. Then there's the SEC Championship Game and a possible rematch against LSU, Tennessee, or even Georgia, or a possible match-up against Florida. If all goes well, this team could very well grab one of the top two BCS spots thanks to strength of schedule. This could make for a very Happy New Year.

A quick note to any San Diegans reading this. The National Weather Service has twice interrupted my watching of the back of my eyelids in an attempt to recover from Jetlag Part II to inform us, in their dire muffled voice and scrolling bold letters across a red background, that they have issued a FLASH FLOOD WARNING for the southern part of San Diego County until 3:30PM today. I have a feeling that this is the first in a series of warnings that we'll be given over the next few days. Remember, we went half of a year without any rain, so while you may be a tad agitated about having to drive home on the rain-slicked roads, dodging the pirohetting cars, we really do need this. Even the .08 inches yesterday was cause for celebration.

On a quick, unrelated note, gas prices in San Diego County are now averaging $2.47. That's for the low-grade stuff. I could be wrong, but that's about a 30-cent increase in the last two weeks.

In the words of John Denver, damn it's good to be back home again. Fifteen hours in a plane will definitely take its toll, but the nicotine gum and the knowing what awaited helped make the sleeplessness, the cramped quarters, the bad movies (The Stepford Wives and The Terminal) and the grumpy neighbor on the Amsterdam to Cincinnatti leg worth everything. There's much to catch up on--over 500 new posts on Bloglines, some e-mails, a few happy dogs that actually seem to have missed me, and a DVR'd debate--so this place might be quiet for a few days while I get reacclimated.

*

I finally put up a "Search" option for this site. It's basically a google search of the archived posts. Now you can see what, if anything, I've written about your favorite subject. Hard to believe that I've referenced Madonna only 14 times. (Thanks to Bradley's Almanac for the code.)

**

Hard to believe that I went over 180 days without seeing any measureable rain. Though some was forecast for Amsterdam while I was there, it missed me. I figured that I would go another few months, but whadayaknow, I awoke this a.m. to a downpour. A nice tropical feel in the saturated air, a low pressure that opened up the heavens and ended the longest rainless streak in San Diego history (beating last year's record by a day or two). More is promised, so I've put this blog on "Storm Watch 2004."

***

It was sad hearing about Christopher Reeves' passing, even sadder to read about Ken Caminiti's death. I hate to think that my lasting image of the guy will be as a long-faded superstar limping around in a Braves uniform, badly trying to fill a void that the Braves needed to fill. By all accounts, he was a good guy who despite his physical strength could not be strong enough in the face of his demons, and it seems they finally won. Geoff over at Ducksnorts has a nice post about Caminiti.

****

One of the highlights of the trip was finishing David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas. The novel more than lives up to all of the hype surrounding it. One of its main strengths is that it has almost no weakness. Even the futuristic settings, something I often find difficult to suspend my disbelief against, were genius. If it seems like I'm overdoing the praise, I can only tell you to go now and buy a copy of this book. You won't regret it.

October 15, 2004

Jacques Derrida died? Thanks CNN International. Not only do you spend too much time covering cricket and not enough on baseball, but you've failed to mark this passing? Geez, what else am I going to find out when I get home and open up Bloglines?

Again, time prevents me from writing about my Derrida memories (in fact, time has been kind enough to erase much of my memory of studying Derrida). I do often wonder, though, if it's anything more than a coincidence that my first marriage fell apart about the same time I was taking a Post-Structuralist Literary Theory class.